Private Museum Owners to Form Association

The Financial Times is reporting a group of 23 wealthy collectors who have private museums are forming an alliance/association to promote the collections, share experiences and works. The group was formed by Philip Dodd,  an expert in the Chinese contemporary art market and will be called the Global Private Museum Association.

Given private museums, in many cases have more funds available for acquisitions and research, the new association might provide opportunities for art service professionals such as appraisers to make contact and network into the private museum world and generate an additional revenue stream.

The Financial Times reports

Wealthy art collectors will meet in London on Wednesday to establish the first global association of private museums, fuelled by the rapid growth in the number of wealthy individuals in Asia and other emerging economies with an interest in the arts.

Twenty-three museum owners from the US and Europe, China, Indonesia, Dubai, Turkey and Mexico are aiming to share expertise about acquiring works or curating skills, as well as to boost the prominence of their exhibitions by sharing works and even whole shows.

Public museums and galleries in Europe and the US are accustomed to working together, loaning and borrowing works and sending exhibitions on tour. But the new generation of private museums have much less experience of sharing work or curatorial expertise.

Organised by Philip Dodd, a former director of the ICA gallery in London and an expert in the Chinese contemporary art market, the Global Private Museum Association will formalise links built up between international collectors in recent years at Art15, a contemporary art fair held annually in Kensington.

“Our view is that over a period there will be a pooling strategy among members. A great show in Turin can end up in Miami, or in Beijing,” said Mr Dodd, chairman of creative agency Made in China.

With no official figures on private museum numbers, tracking their growth is difficult. Larry’s List, an art research group, said in its 2014 Art Collector Report that there were 350 private museums globally, 27 per cent of which were founded before 2000. More than half were founded in the subsequent decade; and one-fifth have been set up since 2010.

The phenomenal accumulation of wealth by individuals in emerging economies such as China is fuelling the trend. With 190 dollar billionaires, China has more than any other country outside the US, according to 2014 data from Wealth-X and UBS.

With complete independence of funding, big budgets and an often small hierarchy that can take rapid decisions, private museums can move more quickly than national or state-funded institutions to acquire works or lay on exhibitions.

The tight public spending climate in western countries since the financial crisis has also put state-owned or funded institutions under pressure to demonstrate their public value in their visitor numbers, said Mr Dodd, who added independent collectors do not feel the same tension. “Private museums may be able to do more risky shows,” Mr Dodd said.

One of the most experienced among the participating museums is the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, which was set up in Turin, Italy, in 1995. Founder Patrizia Re Rebaudengo became interested in contemporary art in London in the 1990s, acquiring the work of artists such as Anish Kapoor and Julian Opie. The Foundation has 1,000 artefacts across two venues in Turin.

Ms Re Rebaudengo said the European collectors were already relatively familiar with one another, but not with their Asian counterparts. “This collaboration is the future for private museums.”

Another prominent collector is Budi Tek, an Indonesian-Chinese farming magnate who has created two private museums since 2008.

Asked if the surge in buying by private collectors had put extra pressure on less deep-pocketed public bodies, Mr Tek said: “We’re still far from having enough museums in China and Indonesia. There’s always competition [for works] but we don’t worry about it too much — we just want to see a lot of museums being established in Asia.”

Some have drawn comparisons between current art collectors and the philanthropists of the 19th and 20th century, such as US industrialist Henry Frick, mining owner Solomon Guggenheim and sugar magnate Henry Tate, whose collections were originally private but eventually became public bodies. Kate Bryan, director of Art15, said today’s private museums in emerging markets are “already almost acting in an institutional capacity”.

The Chinese government has supported the growth of private museums as a way of providing its growing middle class with cultural opportunities — while keeping its sometimes politically charged art at arms length from the state. “Contemporary art can be a problem for the government,” Mr Dodd said. “So they’ve outsourced it to the private sector.”

Source: The Financial Times